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We maintain, and it is evident truth, that the Supreme is
everywhere and yet nowhere; keeping this constantly in mind let
us see how it bears on our present enquiry.
If God is nowhere, then not anywhere has He "happened to be"; as
also everywhere, He is everywhere in entirety: at once, He is
that everywhere and everywise: He is not in the everywhere but is
the everywhere as well as the giver to the rest of things of
their being in that everywhere. Holding the supreme place- or
rather no holder but Himself the Supreme- all lies subject to
Him; they have not brought Him to be but happen, all, to Him- or
rather they stand there before Him looking upon Him, not He upon
them. He is borne, so to speak, to the inmost of Himself in love
of that pure radiance which He is, He Himself being that which
He. loves. That is to say, as self-dwelling Act and
Intellectual-Principle, the most to be loved, He has given
Himself existence. Intellectual-Principle is the issue of Act:
God therefore is issue of Act, but, since no other has generated
Him, He is what He made Himself: He is not, therefore, "as He
happened to be" but as He acted Himself into being.
Again; if He preeminently is because He holds firmly, so to
speak, towards Himself, looking towards Himself, so that what we
must call his being is this self-looking, He must again, since
the word is inevitable, make Himself: thus, not "as He happens to
be" is He but as He Himself wills to be. Nor is this will a
hazard, a something happening; the will adopting the Best is not
a thing of chance.
That his being is constituted by this self-originating
self-tendence- at once Act and repose- becomes clear if we
imagine the contrary; inclining towards something outside of
Himself, He would destroy the identity of his being. This
self-directed Act is, therefore, his peculiar being, one with
Himself. If, then, his act never came to be but is eternal- a
waking without an awakener, an eternal wakening and a
supra-Intellection- He is as He waked Himself to be. This
awakening is before being, before Intellectual-Principle, before
rational life, though He is these; He is thus an Act before
Intellectual-Principle and consciousness and life; these come
from Him and no other; his being, then, is a self-presence,
issuing from Himself. Thus not "as He happened to be" is He but
as He willed to be.
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